It all started in 2011 - we decided to ride Lands End to John O Groats, since then we've completed a number of 'challenges' raising over £15,000 for various charities.
You can read about our adventures here, and also our on-going efforts to keep on cycling!

Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Tales from the Tour.....

As this years Tour heads gently towards an ignonimious, Cav-Free finale, I wonder whether it's all become a bit banal? - where's the drama? Apart from the farcical day on the Ventoux there's not been a great deal of spectacle so far? There's been a few minor crashes but nothing like the usual skin lacerating affairs. I suppose it makes a change. Since the race started in 1903 there has been hardly a year where riders (or their supporters) haven't resorted to dubious methods to ensure success.

The second tour, in 1904, was one of the most scandalous. Riders were
punished for skulduggery including taking shortcuts and using cars and trains.
Others, such as race favourite Maurice Garin, were beaten up by their rivals'
supporters. The following year saw nails being strewn on the course, a practice
that continued for several more Tours.

Tales of riders seeking chemical assistance began to make the news in the
1920s when brothers Francis and Henri Pélissier (the 1923 Tour winner) boasted
to a journalist that they had...

"cocaine to go in our eyes, chloroform for
our gums, and do you want to see the pills? We keep going on dynamite. In the
evenings we dance around our rooms instead of sleeping."

Needless to say,
the Pélissier brothers were French cycling heroes. While not all competitors
relied on "dynamite", it was common practice for Tour cyclists to drink
alcohol during the race until the 1960s, when the French passed a law
forbidding the use of stimulants in sport. However, the British rider Tom
Simpson reportedly drank brandy before his death on Mont Ventoux during the
1967 Tour.

Stories of other methods of assistance, especially in the mountain stages,
regularly crop up. A 1938 article described how a former champion was praised
for making a miraculous recovery – only for it to be later revealed that he was
hanging on to the back of a car. In 1955 the Guardian reported a long list of
riders who had been fined for receiving an "unsolicited push" from
spectators.

Meanwhile, in 1950, the French government had to apologise to Italy when
drunk spectators blocked the road in the Pyrenees and threatened favourite Gino
Bartali, forcing the Italian team to withdraw. Even more extreme was the case
of the "fan" who punched five-times Tour winner Eddy Merckx in the
kidneys during the 1975 race. Merckx finished the stage, but his attempt to win
a sixth Tour was fatally damaged.

Doping tests were introduced in the mid-60s and so began a long history of
riders trying to fool the doctors. One infamous case was that of Michel
Pollentier who was disqualified in 1978, after it was discovered that he had an
elaborate system of tubes running from his armpit to his penis containing clean
urine.

Recent drug scandals have included cases of riders using testosterone.
Perhaps they should have taken note of Italian cyclist Mario Cipollini who used
a more natural method to boost his supply of the male hormone – taping a
picture of Pamela Anderson to his handlebars.